geodesic

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

• adjective Of or relating to the geometry of geodesics.
• adjective Of or relating to geodesy.
• adjective Having a structure consisting of lightweight rods or poles joined so as to form interlocking polygons whose vertices lie on an imaginary sphere.
• noun The shortest path between two points on any mathematically defined surface.

from The Century Dictionary.

• Same as geodetic
• noun A geodesic line.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

• adjective (Math.) Of or pertaining to geodesy; geodetic.
• adjective (Architecture) Made of lightweight structural supporting elements connected in a manner to provide great rigidity; -- of structures.
• noun A geodetic line or curve.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

• noun mathematics the shortest line between two points on a specific surface
• adjective of or relating to geodesy
• adjective of or relating to a geodesic dome

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

• adjective of or relating to or determined by geodesy
• noun (mathematics) the shortest line between two points on a mathematically defined surface (as a straight line on a plane or an arc of a great circle on a sphere)